Once Nico Rosberg discovered he had no
car-pit telemetry on the rolling lap, there was
never going to be any repeat of Bahrain’s
dramatic contest within the Mercedes boys.
Without a proper clutch pre -set, Nico was slow
away, and spent most of the race picking his way
back to second, while additionally providing manual
fuel-readouts to the pit wall. In Nico’s case, it
quite a mentally testing race, and he looked a little
drained afterwards:
" T hat was not a perfect weekend for me. Too
many things went wrong, beginning with a
technical problem and a less than perfect job from
me in qualifying. Today I didn't have any telemetry,
so there was no communication from the car to the
pits. My engineers couldn't see what was going
on in my car and therefore they couldn't set up my
clutch for the start. The clutch was completely on
the wrong place, which is why I had a really bad
start.
“I had some contact with Bottas in Turn 1 and I
thought that was it. Luckily my car wasn't damaged
and in the following laps the pace in the car
seemed good, which meant I was able to climb
some positions. To finish second in the end, on a
weekend of damage limitation, is great. I collected
some important points again, which makes me
happy.”
While he heads to Europe with the points
lead, Nico faces some soul-searching. Not his
team - mate:
“T his car is just unbelievable; in the final laps, I
was pushing a little bit more to keep up the tyre
temperatures and it just felt great to drive. I'm so,
so happy today. We had to make a lot of changes
after P2 in terms of the set-up of the car but after it
rained on Saturday, we didn't know exactly how it
would go today. There was a lot of hard work done,
sitting down with the engineers so that we didn't
guess anything and just made the right steps in
anticipation for today.
“ We are definitely on a roll right now; I'm working
hard, the team is working hard and we just want to
improve even further when we get back to Europe."
Lewis turns the screws
Nico slices past Vettel at the end of the
straight as he recovers to second.
38
GPWEEK.com // 38
GPWEEK.com //
F1 >>> CHINA
PARTNERS: